Search Results for
"learning"

Work Integrated learning (WIL) programs, such as co-operative education programs, offer students a learning environment which exists outside the traditional classroom and specific discipline boundaries. This necessitates assessment practices that go beyond traditional practices and relationships. Work placement supervisors are best located to observe the students' learning and development and offer feedback on performance and improvement. An investigation was carried out in order to articulate the role of supervisors and work colleagues in facilitating learning in the workplace environment and their involvement in assessment practices. Interviews were conducted with academics and industry representatives on their perceptions of assessment task validity in terms of professional and generic skill development. A synthesis of the findings formed the basis of the research described in this paper. Key findings highlighted the need for better preparation of industry supervisors as to their role in providing feedback and assessment; better preparation of students for transition from the classroom to the workplace; and the importance of ongoing involvement of the three stakeholders (academic, supervisor and student) to maximise learning and professional development. Recommendations for assessment practices include suggestions on how to involve employers in appraising workplace performance; how to measure the real life application of learning; and the development of generic employability skills. © Common Ground, Kathy Henschke, Joan Richardson.

This paper discusses the findings of a research study concerning the use of e-portfolios to develop independent learning, from the perspectives of teachers and students in a Hong Kong university. While most of the findings confirm the value of e-portfolio practice reported in other contexts, they throw into relief a complicated interplay and conflict of factors that may thwart the good intentions of e-portfolio design and implementation. Insights derived from this research will illuminate the issues about eportfolio-mediated independent learning across a range of settings and learners.

Teaching faculty is the most valuable resource, the pivot around which the whole teaching and learning process revolves in an educational institution. The shortage of quality faculty is currently acknowledged as the most critical problem and finding enough competent and qualified faculties is becoming a growing challenge for engineering institutions, as they have to compete with their counterparts in India and abroad, in curriculum and teaching standards. A synoptic view of the main factors behind the shortage, its impacts in the quality of education and strategies required for maintaining quality and balancing the demand and supply of teaching faculty in technical institutions are delved in this paper. The analysis also highlights the core competency of engineering teachers, the present scenario of teaching faculty, the state-wise magnitude of shortage and the educational profile of teaching faculty at all-India level. The research gives a national perspective on the problem and adds further investigation into various facets and illuminates its impacts on the quality of education. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Improving the effectiveness of eAssessment depends on the knowledge and experience of feedback-givers. This paper describes an indirect approach to improving feedback for learners - training the feedback-giver while actually preparing the feedback for the learners. Specifically, the aim is to help inexperienced teaching assistants (TAs) who lack training in how to provide quality feedback. The approach emphasises the ways in which feedback is organised through the use of feedback patterns. There is evidence that students in higher education, like adult learners, require improved feedback to make their learning more efficient. McFeSPA (metacognitive feedback scaffolding system for pedagogical apprenticeship) was designed and implemented as efeedback to help improve the TAs' feedback skills while marking programming assignments - and then evaluated to determine whether TAs could benefit from automated feedback. The evaluation involves examining the system with scaffolding turned off to help three TAs give feedback to a group of students and scaffolding turned on for three TAs using the full system. The results are broadly favourable. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Background: Research regarding beginning teachers' typical responses to the difficulties encountered at work relates to the professional, personal and environmental aspects of teaching. At the professional level, research describes mainly the beginner's difficulties in dealing with discipline problems, in using teaching methods efficiently, in planning and organizing assignments, in creating motivation in learning, evaluating student work and creating interaction with the pupils' parents. At the personal level, research shows a great discrepancy between the great expectations that young teachers may have of themselves on one hand, and recurring feelings of impaired self-confidence on the other. At the environmental level, the research shows that beginners have difficulty in integrating in the school environment. Teaching physical education is different from teaching most other subjects since physical education focuses on motor skills rather than verbal-academic skills, so that its teaching tools are different, and the status of the subject and those who teach it is different. Therefore, the question is whether the characteristic behavior of beginning teachers in general is typical of physical education teachers as well. Aims: The purpose of this research is to portray the strengths and difficulties of novice physical education teachers as perceived by the teachers themselves and to analyze the significance of the findings. Methods: Data were collected by open-ended questionnaires and structured interviews that were conducted with 62 beginning physical education teachers. Results: Beginning physical education teachers face similar difficulties as beginning teachers of academic subjects, but with much greater intensity. In the interpretation of the findings, the researchers identified five problems encountered by novice physical education teachers: (1) novices tend to feel and show a high degree of dependence on others; (2) they ignore the wider educational circle outside the classroom; (3) novices emphasize the importance of values, but are frustrated by their own inability to implement them; (4) they suffer from a gap between their initiatives and the environment's lack of appreciation; and (5) they possess a limited knowledge of practical pedagogy. Conclusions: It emerged from the present study that beginning teachers need to get meaningful support by: (1) being allowed to make mistakes in independent decisions and receiving suitable guidance to foster professional development; (2) being given the opportunity to link theory and practice independently; and (3) having the opportunity to learn methods to enable them to teach moral values. The article recommends considering ways to provide this support in teacher training and in the induction of new teachers in the schools. © 2010 Association for Physical Education.

This paper seeks to examine the growth and development of tourism education within Great Britain, with specific reference to the situation in England and Wales. This is a subject that has received relatively scant attention since the publication of a number of seminal papers produced in the mid to late 1990's and early C20th. The paper reviews how tourism education has developed from relatively humble origins to that of a subject taught in a wide variety of education institutions. It examines what programmes seek to achieve in terms of knowledge skills development and preparing students to meet the labour needs of the tourism industry. It also reflects on where tourism education is going in terms of courses, course philosophy, levels of study, subject content and teaching and learning strategies.A number of key themes or issues will be highlighted all central to the thinking of the curriculum planner. These include an analysis of curriculum models, the importance of developing academic vocational and key transferable skills and the need to add value and increase employability. The paper concludes by examining the future of tourism education in an increasingly mature educational market. Here the development of the new 14-19 diplomas in travel and tourism and employer-led foundation degrees are discussed and the implications for curriculum development in higher education broached. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.

A context-aware ubiquitous learning environment is an authentic learning environment with personalized digital supports. While showing the potential of applying such a learning environment, researchers have also indicated the challenges of providing adaptive and dynamic support to individual students. In this paper, a decision-treeoriented mechanism is developed for that purpose, enabling digital guidance for students to observe and classify real-world objects in the learning activities of natural science courses. To show the effectiveness of the innovative approach, a context-aware ubiquitous learning environment was implemented for the "butterfly and ecology" unit of a fourth-grade natural science course in Taiwan, and 42 students participated in the learning activity. From the surveys and interviews that were conducted to understand the functionalities of the system and the learning effectiveness for the students, the results show that the system had a positive impact on students' learning, especially on the affective domain, including participation, motivation, and interaction. © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS).